


Love, Obviously

by firstimecaller



Category: Love Actually (2003), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Eventual Johnlock, Fluff, Infidelity, M/M, Not Very Fussed About Embryo Watson, Oral Sex, Post-The Sign of Three, Pre-His Last Vow, Rimming, Shower Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-08
Updated: 2014-11-30
Packaged: 2018-02-21 23:50:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 13,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2486822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstimecaller/pseuds/firstimecaller
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One side effect of having an attempted murderer as a wedding photographer? A distinctly lacklustre wedding album and less-than-warm feelings for the extant images. To fill the gap, Sherlock obtains substitute video footage from an unlikely source -- the page boy, Archie, whose fascination with Sherlock is evident in the prevalence of Sherlock in his camerawork. While screening the clips, Sherlock realizes that the camera caught revealing evidence of his true feelings for John. This loosely riffs off the Keira Knightley (Juliet)/Andrew Lincoln (Mark) scenes from Love Actually, but with a Johnlock conclusion. Rated for the last chapter or three.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first attempt at writing fanfic. A lot of personal writing firsts in here, actually.  
> Not Brit-picked by anyone other than me (I'm from the U.S.); apologies for any jarring terminology, misplaced punctuation, or errant zeds.

London was in the midst of its regularly scheduled mid-August swelter. The windows of 221B Baker Street were cross-sashed to admit whatever chancy puffs of air might venture through, though the surplus cacophony of morning traffic was barely worth the trade. That, taken along with the airborne muddle of exhaust, stale rubbish, and yeasty comestibles floating up from the pavement, was doing nothing to soothe Sherlock's already disordered temper.

The morning had barely begun, and he was already looking at an inbox full of tedium. Normally John kept the wittering public at bay, but a few days ago, Dr. John H. Watson and Miss Mary E. Morstan became Dr. and Mrs. John H. Watson, and while John and Mary were skiving off on a ~~sex holiday~~ honeymoon, Sherlock had been relegated to blog duty. His post-wedding entry had been less a lark and more a form of muted revenge, but now that the proletariat knew that someone was minding the store, he had had to field occasional but ever-irksome emails and comments from well-wishers and nosy parkers.

There were friends of the couple who had attended the wedding and wanted to relive the happier moments of the event, others who had not been able to attend but wished to feel connected to their big day, and yet others with perverse curiosity who just couldn't leave well enough alone.

 _“_ _Darlings! So sorry we missed!_ _Are there any photos?_ _”_

 _“_ _Mad_ _wedding_ _, mate. Any_ _video_ _? The missus doesn'_ _t believe some bloke almost got snuffed._ _”_

 _“_ _Was that murder berk even using a real camera?_ _”_

For Sherlock, it was unbearable. This particular morning, having received such an email from Mike Stamford, a man he had formerly believed sensible, Sherlock was animatedly decrying humanity’s perverse fascination with pedestrian mating rituals when Mrs. Hudson, laden with tea tray, walked into the sitting room.

"Oh Lord, Sherlock! What are you on about?" She rested the tea things on the coffee table and walked over to look past Sherlock's shoulder at the offending laptop.

"Just another pointless request for visual evidence of John and Mary's nuptials. Do people not believe it happened? I'm willing to sign an affidavit!"

"Sherlock dear, people _like_ wedding photos. Everyone is happy in a wedding photo. People look their smartest, the children are always adorable, and they're a reminder that true love is real and to be celebrated."

If Mrs. Hudson noticed the way Sherlock's face went from combative to distressed, then back to defiant, she made no show. Still embattled, but knowing there was no point in arguing, Sherlock mumbled, "True love, of course. People are so tiresome." He turned in his chair to Mrs. Hudson, who was now handing him a cup of tea, and said, more clearly, "Well, people will have to be disappointed. I'm confident that John and Mary are not comfortable sharing any photos captured by The Mayfly Man, even once Lestrade releases them from evidence. I will let Mike and the others know they'll have to make do with less visual assurances."  

Mrs. Hudson nodded absently, remembering the terrible events that almost led to the death of that nice Major Sholto, and she shuddered briefly before shaking herself out of her thoughts. Immediately, another memory came to mind, and her brows rose. She ventured, "You know, Sherlock, in all the commotion, I had forgotten, but now that I think of it, I believe your young friend Archie fancied himself quite the junior filmmaker that day. You remember, don't you? He had one of those, what do you call thems, flip something? Like a video camera? Maybe you could convince him to give over whatever he recorded, make a nice video for John and Mary that has nothing to do with that horrid Mayfly fellow."

Sherlock considered. "I had forgotten that amid all the consulting. I suppose it would deflect these insipid questions. And Archie does owe me for those crime scene photos," he trailed off absently, sipping again at his tea while Mrs. Hudson beamed. It was rare that her ideas met with Sherlock's approval, especially ones so adjacent to sentiment.

"Yes dear, and it will be a lovely present for John and Mary." Sherlock rolled his eyes but nodded slightly and typed a quick email to Archie's mother.

*           *           *

The video files arrived later that week. John and Mary were still on a beach somewhere, and Sherlock was between cases. He had done a fair bit of research on video editing and felt competent to take Archie's raw footage and make it into something passably representative of an event that was quickly becoming a prime candidate for mind palace deletion.

He opened the first file. Archie was no auteur, and his diminutive height and distractible nature meant that, except for the ceremony itself, most of the shots lasted only a few seconds and were taken at neck-craning angles. However, he was thorough, and his priority in his first hour of filming had clearly been the documentation of as many of the attendees as he could manage to capture amid his pre-ceremony wanderings. It was a good foundation for a final product.

The second file was the ceremony itself. Archie had taken advantage of his age and size to move about the church in a way no adult guest could have managed. Sherlock winced as he took in John, with his soldier's posture, waiting with the clergyman at the front of the church, his flexing hands the only traitorous sign of anxiety. _Are you sure you want to do this, John?_ Sherlock remembered thinking in that moment before the bridal march began, and almost simultaneously he thought, as the screen zoomed in on John's slightly pixelated face, _Why did you do it, John?_

Sherlock let out a sigh, but his attention was suddenly diverted from maudlin thoughts by a change in the camera's angle and a widening of the shot that revealed his own tall frame, to John's left. The first chords of the bridal march had sounded, and John (presumably along with all of the guests) was looking off camera, down the aisle to the chapel doors that were about to open. But Sherlock...Sherlock was looking at John.

Not only looking, but _yearning_.

Sherlock paused the video.

_No no no no no._

This was _not_ happening. He had been so careful, hadn't he?  So many months, planning a wedding -- could there be a more tiresomely conventional endeavour? But he had managed it as if it held all the delights of a locked room murder. A stag night with an inebriated, impossibly soft, open John Watson -- could there have been a more tempting sight than John's face, crumpled with soggy laughter, or a more moving sensation than that earnest, lingering hand on his knee? But he had kept the evening chaste and his finer feelings shuttered, even before the nurse's interruption, even with a compromised breath alcohol content.

All of this effort, all to be undone by an eight-year-old with a toy camera and inadequate parental supervision! All this hiding in the period since his return, with the wry coincidence of his resurrection and John's engagement…no, not coincidence, never that -- the universe was rarely that lazy, but it was often that cruel. He had deduced what he could of Mary that first night back, but the most important deduction was not written on her eyebrows or earrings, it was written on John's face as he waited to propose. John was invested, John loved her, and if Sherlock had to script, direct, act, and produce an Olivier-worthy one-man show of disinterested friendship from now until the end of time, he would do so. For John, as always.

And he had done, he _had_. He had heard Mrs. Hudson's "Oh Sherlock", and registered the softened eyes of the guests after the Best Man speech, and his "Did I do it wrong?" was as calculated as the rest of it (attempted murder notwithstanding). Make them see how profoundly John was loved, how profoundly John could affect even a ridiculous tosser like himself, but in all things keep the focus on John and publicly bless his union with Mary. Let them think he'd gone soft. If Sherlock was a sop, at least he wasn't a freak, and if he wasn't a freak, there was nothing to steer the eye away from Dr. and Mrs. John H. Watson. Misdirection, misdirection, misdirection.

Foiled by a page boy.

Sherlock rewound the clip a few seconds and tapped Play. Archie had none of the guests' eager anticipation for the opening of the chapel doors, but he was fascinated with the detective, and it should not have surprised Sherlock that Archie's camera lingered unswervingly on him for the few seconds between the commencement of "The Bridal March" and the guests standing for Mary's entrance.

He hit Pause once more. Instinctively he squinted to further blur the image that confronted him, the expression that had arrested his viewing the first time through. How often had he scrutinized the faces of strangers and acquaintances, witnesses and suspects, looking for clues to their internal truths? How much time had he spent in mirrors, schooling his own expressions while donning a disguise or preparing a dissimulation? He knew what human need, what bereft longing looked like, in both its affected and genuine forms, and there it was before him on the frozen screen, horrifyingly real.

_Oh god, Molly. You were right. I do look sad when I think he can't see. And not only when I'm about to jump off of a roof._

Anyone, anyone, would be able to see it too. He raced through the remaining footage, most of it innocuous, but laced throughout the series of clips was image after image of Sherlock, caught out wearing one utterly damning expression after another.

This would not do. John could not see this. John must never know.

*           *           *

"John, dear."

"Mmm?"

"You know, I hate to bring this up in the middle of," she waved her hand languidly, capturing the sand, the small breaking waves, the umbrella'd beverage shedding condensation in her other hand, "all this. But it occurs to me that arsehole photographer bilked us out of happy wedding photos. I only intend to have one wedding, husband, and I'd like to remember it through eyes that did not belong to, you know, a psycho killer in fancy dress."

"Mmm hmm."

"So I was thinking we could ask around, anyone who took photos on, you know, camera phones and the like, to send them to us. There must be at least a few that aren't hideous."

"Hmm mmm."

"John. Are you listening? If you think it's a terrible idea, say something."

"..."

"Brilliant."

*           *           *

From:            mmorstan@gmail.com

To:                sherlock@thescienceofdeduction.co.uk; mhudson@hotmail.com;  
                     glestrade@met.police.uk; molly@mollyhooper.co.uk; jhawkins@cammedia.co.uk

CC:                john@johnwatsonblog.co.uk

Subject:         Help! My wedding photographer was a psychopath!

Thanks again to all of you for being part of our wedding and making it such a wonderful event. I would say thank you for making it "memorable", but I believe our psycho wedding photographer took the cup there. That whole rumpus has cast rather a pall over our likely enjoyment of the wedding photos and videos that he took (once they've made it out of Greg's evidence locker). We're dearly hoping that some of you took photos or videos that you can send to John and me. Camera phones, rubbish resolution, it doesn't matter, as long as you didn't attempt to murder anyone at the wedding.

No rush, we're still enjoying sunshine and daiquiris. Returning to London next week, and looking forward to seeing you all!

xoxo

Mary & John

*           *           *

_Oh god oh god oh god. Did she cc: Archie's mum? No she did not. Of course she didn't.  Breathe, Sherlock._

*           *           *

From:         mhudson@hotmail.com

To:                mmorstan@gmail.com

CC:                john@johnwatsonblog.co.uk; sherlock@thescienceofdeduction.co.uk; mhudson@hotmail.com;  
                     glestrade@met.police.uk; molly@mollyhooper.co.uk; jhawkins@cammedia.co.uk

Subject:         Re: Help! My wedding photographer was a psychopath!

Oh you poor dears! When I think of that horrible Mayfly Man, I get so angry! The very idea that someone would use the happiest day of your lives for his own nefarious purposes. It's just vile!

But thank YOU for inviting me to such a beautiful wedding. Apart from the attempted murder, it was just so lovely!!

Don't worry your heads about wedding memories. As it turns out, your page boy was a wee bit of an amateur filmmaker! I think that Sherlock has the videos and is working on something special for you that may be ready by the time you return.

Love to you both,

Mrs. Hudson

*           *           *

  _Oh god oh god oh god oh god. Get in front of this Sherlock before they bring it down on your ears._

 *           *           *

From:           sherlock@thescienceofdeduction.co.uk

To:               mmorstan@gmail.com

CC:               john@johnwatsonblog.co.uk; mhudson@hotmail.com; glestrade@met.police.uk;  
                    molly@mollyhooper.co.uk; jhawkins@cammedia.co.uk

Subject:         Re: Help! My wedding photographer was a psychopath!

Calm yourself, Mary. Young Archie had a Flip camera, and I have obtained the files from his mother. Archie has the signal advantage of not being an attempted murderer, but his videography skills could withstand improvement. However, there is ample footage for me to edit together into something fairly representative of the event. Please do not give it another thought. Enjoy your holiday. Careful with the rum.

SH

*           *           *

Sherlock played the draft final cut one more time. _Well, that's that then. A patch job if ever I saw one._ He clicked Compress, rubbed his temples, and exhaled. He'd already projected five different scenarios likely to result from sending the salvaged video to the Watsons, but only one would involve a challenge to its verity or completeness. Worth the risk.

A perfunctory email to Mary and John, the file attached, and he tapped send. It was done.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Days later, the doorbell rang. After a shuffle of footsteps, the opening of the door, and mingled voices of recognition and greeting, he heard John's unmistakable tread on the stair. _Number 5, then._ He was sitting at the kitchen table, perched over the microscope, fingers stilled over the knobs.

"In here, John. Mind the files."

John looked down just in time to avoid tripping over the stacks of Met folders piled in what looked like disarray but was probably a precise catalogue, there in the space where his chair used to be. He looked up at Sherlock, still intent on the slide below. "Hey Sherlock, sorry am I interrupting something?"

"Mmm, just a moment John."

John took another look around the sitting room. His chair was gone, and loose papers appeared to have proliferated, but otherwise the room was little changed from a few weeks before, when he had stumbled out the door behind a private nurse and an inebriated consulting detective.

"Sherlock, where's my chair?"

No answer from the kitchen. John walked over to the dining table and sat down in front of Sherlock's open laptop, idly dragging his forefinger over the track pad while looking over at the file-colonized floor where his chair used to be. The screen lit up, still unlocked, a smattering of folders on the desktop. The light attracted his attention, and he looked down for a moment, not really reading, until the date "10 Aug 14" caught his eye.  _Ah, lovely!_ He hovered the cursor over the folder.

"Hey, Sherlock, is thi--"

**_*SNAP*_ **

"Oi! Sherlock! What the hell! You could have broken my fingers!"

The man who looked down at him was neither as angry nor as manic as his sudden action suggested. John expected to see the fury of privacy invaded, but what he saw instead was...fear. John shifted instantly from indignation to explanation. "Sorry! Sherlock, I'm sorry, I just-- well, that's why I'm here really, the wedding. Mary and I really appreciated the video you edited, but we wondered if you had anything from the ceremony itself. You know, the vows and all that. Mary thought you might not have considered that as important as the other parts, maybe you have footage from the ceremony you left out? She would have come herself but you know, I hadn't seen you since the wedding, and she thought--"

"John, I need you to leave right now. I am in the middle of a very delicate experiment, and your presence is distracting."

"Okay okay but you said, 'In here John' and 'Just a moment John' and I waited here and I happened to see a folder with the wedding date, and I'm just asking if you have something more than we can look at."

"No John, you're mistaken. There's nothing else, nothing from the ceremony itself. I appreciate your coming by, but I cannot help you. Please give Mary my best." He scooped up the laptop and returned to the kitchen. The dismissal was clear. With a final look at the hearth, John stood up and walked heavily out of the flat, somewhere between furious and bewildered.

Sherlock listened to the footsteps recede and sat down before the microscope, a homing pigeon mindlessly returning to roost, but he had lost the thread of the analysis the moment John had ascended the stair.

_Stupid, stupid overreaction!_ If he hadn't panicked, he could have simply told John that Archie had taken little footage from the ceremony itself. He could have sent them an edited version, the few minutes leading up to that first traitorous look. John would believe that Archie had no interest in the vows themselves, or that his mum had forced him to put the camera away, or that any number of circumstances had prevented the recordation of the full ceremony. Could he still do it? Would it even be credible after his adamant denial? Or should he drop it and hope that John would as well?  _John, drop it? Not likely. And Mary, who always knows when I am fibbing?_

_Not worth the risk that he'll reach out to Archie's mum._ Sherlock opened the laptop, clicked on the editing application, and bent to his task.

*           *           *

By the time John arrived at home, Sherlock's email was waiting for him. He clicked on the file and smiled at Archie's experimental camera work. After a few minutes of stocking’d knees, ancient chapel rafters, and blurred sweeps of stonework, flowers, and be-lilac'd bridesmaids, the video cut off abruptly right as it began to pan up toward the altar and the waiting groom and clergy. In his email, Sherlock had speculated that Archie's mum had taken the camera away to discourage the boy from moving about during the ceremony, which was plausible enough. Certainly no one believed at the time that the photographer needed any back-up video...but something didn't make sense. There was no maternal shushing in the extant footage, not even a brief wrangle with the camera between son and mother. The video just cut to black in mid-pan. It was odd, too, that Sherlock had not remembered earlier that there was some footage, albeit brief, from before the ceremony began. His email claimed he had forgotten, but that was not like him at all. And then there was the look on his face as he snapped the laptop shut and sent John away. Panic, the panic of someone who's been found out. _What did he not want me to see?_

John sent off a quick email of his own. When he cycled to work the next morning, he brought his laptop with him.


	3. Chapter 3

It was after six o'clock in the evening when he made his way over to Baker Street. Mrs. Hudson let him in, but told him apologetically that Sherlock wasn't at home. "That's fine, Mrs. H." He looked up the steps and squared his shoulders. "I'll wait."

 *           *           *

The late August twilight had gone softly orange by the time Sherlock returned to 221B. At the top of the stairs, his ears picked up the now familiar muffled murmurs of wedding guests through tinny computer speakers. He gained the last few steps cautiously, and as he crossed the landing he saw John's profile looking down at the laptop's screen while the processional music began. He froze in the doorway.

"How long?" John whispered, eyes still fixed on the video. "How long, Sherlock, and how did I not...."

Sherlock stared. Even with John's face in profile, and the setting sun throwing the visible side into shadow, it was clear that John's face was flushed with emotion, possibly tears, though that was of course impossible.

"John, please" he coughed out, caught between the desire to confess all, the temptation to prevaricate, and the instinct to flee. John looked up, and their eyes locked. The face of the man on the sofa was crumpled with hurt and confusion and perhaps was that hope? The face of the man in the doorway was flooded by anguish and apology and panic. From the laptop, the clergyman's voice was droning out, "if anyone here knows of any lawful impediment to this marriage, they should declare it now", and Sherlock knew without looking down what his face had involuntarily done at that moment in the ceremony, knew that Archie had captured it perfectly, knew that his face was doing something very similar right about now.

He gave one last pained look to John before pushing himself away from the frame and flying down the stairs. The door to Baker Street slammed shut, and John was again alone.

*           *           *

_Please come back, Sherlock. We need to talk._

_There's nothing to talk about, John. Please let me know when you have left my flat. -SH_

_I'm not leaving until you come back here, and we talk._

_Fine. I'll make other arrangements. -SH_

_Dammit Sherlock you win. I'm leaving. But this isn't over._

He waited and watched from the corner. A few minutes later, 221B went dark, and the street door opened. John walked out, looking up and down Baker Street, but not seeing the dark figure lurking hard by the odd little granite fountain where Allsop met Baker. He saw John exhale, pull the door to with the knocker askew, and step onto the pavement toward his waiting bicycle, a rucksack on his shoulder.

After Sherlock watched him pedal away, he crossed the street and re-entered 221B. The steps felt higher this evening, or gravity heavier. By the time he walked into the flat, his head was buzzing with adrenaline withdrawal. He threw his jacket off, toed his shoes aimlessly, and flopped without purpose onto the sofa where John had been sitting only moments before. The leather was still warm, unnervingly warm. He closed his eyes and pictured John, sitting there, watching his best man fall apart onscreen.

Had he really thought he could hide in plain sight for this long? Perversely, did John's failure to see Sherlock in a fake French waiter give him some unconscious faith in his ability to camouflage himself indefinitely? He wanted to scream, picturing those lapses caught on camera at the very moments he should most have been on guard, but there was no point. Self-recrimination would not change the proof. In every other skill he had mastered, there had always been initial trial and error, a warm-up before achieving fluency: experiments on dead tissue, arpeggios to inaugurate a new piece, mirror sessions before debuting a disguise. Where was the grace period for this? Not the first eighteen months of their friendship, in which -- he'd later realized -- his transport had been far more savvy about his inclinations than had his mind, and in which John had been reliably dim, such that Sherlock had not once needed even to try to dissemble. He saw now that the ease of that had been, not the absence of tells on his part or pitying forbearance on John’s, but just the perfect overlap of their blind spots.

When else was he to have perfected dissimulation? Not in his time away, when the elemental truth had barged in and taken root; there had been no one in his ambit who could have noticed the shift. By the time he had mustered the resolve to speak with the John of his mind palace, he was six months into a two-year exile. The precarious comfort of those perpetual dialogues had buoyed him through physical trauma and internal disquiet, but he had never had to reconcile the clean, personal facts -- that he loved, that he was in love with, that he was emotionally compromised, indefinitely -- with the messy reality of a corporeal John Watson who was in love with and married to another.

He had been a fool to think that after two years of having the simulacrum of John all to himself, he would be able to reset to the default obliviousness of life before the fall.

So what was he going to do about it?


	4. Chapter 4

Archie's mum had been quick to respond to John's request, but something in her email suggested a pre-emptive apology, akin to the passer-by who accidentally intrudes on a private moment and turns her head too quickly to pretend she saw nothing. On reflection John wondered if -- assumed now, really -- she had watched and reached the same undeniable conclusion.

John pedalled through the dusk, returning to the thoughts that had swarmed him since receiving her reply and viewing the unedited clips. The Sherlock he saw in those videos...it was shocking, yes, to see him so exposed, but was it really at all surprising? As the rhythm of the wheels steadied John’s nerves, he allowed himself to revisit all the old emotional haunts of the past two years, carrying the day’s revelations with him as his mind wandered.

The percolating affinities of like to like that swirled around them years ago, fed by exhilaration and shared danger, had vanished like air from a vacuum when Sherlock stepped off that roof, but the erstwhile suicide could only cast so long a shadow over what had been, incontrovertibly, the best eighteen months of John's life. In two years of mourning and survivor guilt, John had examined every angle of their connection for clues as to why Sherlock had jumped, why he'd forced John to watch, and what could have happened differently to yield a less gruesome outcome. There had never been answers, just more questions, and every one resurrected another cache of memory.

It had struck him sometime in the first year after the fall. He hadn’t been looking for it, the epiphany. He had wanted only to understand whether and to what extent he was responsible, whether there was anything he could have done to keep Sherlock alive, whether and for how long he would be justified in continuing to feel the loss and culpability that weighed down his chest, a constant physical pain still present months and months after the grass on Sherlock’s grave had erased the remnants of spade and churned earth. It took him that long to realise that this was not the grief of one friend for another. It was bereavement, the kind a doctor sees too often, but only among the inner circle, family and life partners. This had been the amputation of a partner, a part of himself. The loss of a loved one. One he had loved.  _Love._ And hadn’t that been a kick in the head. That omnipresent sense that he and Sherlock had not been entirely honest with one another or themselves, that vague fog that swept over him every time he asked himself  _Why do you care so much? Why does it still strike you so low?_ It finally had a name. A useless, useless name.

It took time to see it clearly, and it did nothing to ameliorate the grief, but he ultimately acknowledged, obliquely if not head on, that he had in his own clumsy way been absolutely mad about Sherlock and absolutely bone-headed about just how gone he was. He had never once let Sherlock know, of course, couldn’t have done since he was too dim to see it himself. On occasion, usually occasions involving several belts of whiskey and prolonged social withdrawal, he would let himself fantasise about what he might have done, had he known himself better at a time when it could have mattered. Sometimes he had imagined what might have happened if Sherlock had deduced it – would John have denied it, or would he have felt its obviousness once the words were spoken aloud? Even now, while his muscle memory focused on pedalling and keeping clear of passing buses and parked cars, John let himself laugh, remembering the first time he’d had the disquieting thought:  _Dear god, had Sherlock known?_ Surely not, he had decided swiftly, but that line of thinking had yielded, sometime in the second year, the second realisation. In two years of grief and what-ifs, John had replayed every moment of their time together from his own (sub-palatial) memory, and eventually concluded, with an increasing confidence and an equally strong despondency, that in whatever way Sherlock sensed such things, and possibly with only limited awareness of the feelings, Sherlock had been rather mad about him too. And just as bone-headed. There had even been the nauseating thought:  _And maybe it killed him._ That was too dramatic by half, and John shut the words away whenever they tried to resurface.

Such had been John’s interior life in the wake of Sherlock's death and for the brutal two years thereafter. Mary had entered the fray sometime between the first and second insights. Her presence had been comforting; he had believed his emotional life had ended with Sherlock’s physical one, and he had been grateful that had not been true. His relationship with her was familiar. It followed familiar patterns. It yielded familiar situations and familiar pleasures. It took the edge off the grief and self-flagellation, and it seemed to relieve the pressure on his chest by degrees. He was glad of that, all of it, but it did not end John’s internal examinations. It did not lessen the magnitude of the second epiphany. They had loved one another. They had been idiots. It was humbling and chilling. The night before Mary moved in he had asked himself if he was doing right by her, moving forward with their cosy familiarity while he was still internally sorting out his phantom relationship with a dead man. There was no point in putting her off, he had decided. Life was for the living. It wasn’t as if there were another possible outcome for him and Sherlock.

Sherlock's return had churned up all of that grief and guilt and soul-searching. It had been wrenching to attempt to reconcile the bland practicalities of Sherlock's explanations -- Moriarty, snipers, plausible deniability -- with the numbing tidal wave that broke over him in those first few days after the return. It was easier to avoid than to integrate, easier to assume that he'd just been wrong. Epiphany number one, fine. So he had been mad about Sherlock, full stop. It was obvious that Sherlock had in no way jumped from a rooftop to escape unbearable emotions. No, he had walked into a goddamn film stunt to one-up a madman. Unrequited love had not driven his actions, the very thought was laughable; maybe those sorts of emotions had never been there at all. So much for the second insight, and good on him for choosing Mary over a corpse.

And Sherlock's behaviour, from his ill-timed panto at The Landmark to his worse-timed feint in the Tube carriage, had made it so easy to overwrite the story. Still manipulative as hell, still compelled to always, always be the cleverest in the room and damn the feelings of any poor bloke who had the misfortune to stumble into his path. This returned man was just Sherlock the Clever, and John was almost relieved when it seemed that death had put to rest the tantalising, mesmerising ambiguity of those latter prelapsarian days.

He planned the wedding for Christ's sake! Lilac and serviettes and seating charts and page boy vetting. No one who felt as John once believed Sherlock might have felt could have endured the intimacies of arranging the Watson nuptials. Right?

Round and round went his thoughts while the pedals completed their turns.

The wedding. If John was honest, and by God he was going to be, wife and foetus or no, the wedding had rent great holes in his hastily constructed, grand unifying theory of Sherlock the Clever, Sherlock the Unfeeling. And that was  _before_ the evidence was available for pause rewind and play. The pixelated footage had removed the stopper from John's unconscious recollections of that day. He didn't need to review the video clips to remember Sherlock's speech, Sherlock playing the violin, Sherlock looking at him like...like he was losing something much more profound than a bachelor friend. Sherlock leaving early. The silence since then. And his reaction yesterday with the laptop, and this evening in the doorway....

Like a man being caught out, nothing as soft or forgettable as a child with his hand in the biscuit jar. More like a thief with his pick in the lock, or a glass man about to be stoned.

Sherlock might not have jumped because of unspoken emotional whathaveyous, and perhaps if John had never seen Sherlock's face at the altar, he could have continued to pretend those emotional whathaveyous were grief-born figments of his own stale imagination...but that was simply no longer possible.

And yet...now what. John was married. There was a baby on the way. He had wanted to talk about it all this evening, thought that he and Sherlock owed one another that, even hoped that maybe, Sherlock-who-always-had-a-plan could tell him how they could work their way through this. But what was the point? Maybe Sherlock was right that there was nothing to say. Would it really help to force one another to surface things so out of place in their current circumstances?

Maybe Sherlock had helped them dodge a bullet by insisting on silence. Maybe their friendship would die on the vine, but that was certain to happen if John forced Sherlock to confess, and John couldn't in good conscience tell Sherlock all he'd felt, before the fall, and all he had realised, after. Not with Mary and the baby in play. Not when he couldn't do a damn thing about it now. Did he want to? What did it matter what he wanted? Choices had been made, some for him, some by him, but they were made.

As he neared home, he was pedalling so slowly that he was barely keeping the bike upright. In a few minutes he would have to play the dutiful newlywed, but in the last half mile he allowed his mind to wander away from the messy facts and toward more fantastical what-ifs. What if there were a reset button? What if the nurse had never interrupted that sodden stag night? What if he had known, at any time, that Sherlock was alive out there, projecting his exile like a force field around London? He stopped a few doors short of his and Mary's flat and looked across the front gardens toward the picture window, where he could see her curled up on the sofa with tea and the remote. He wanted to feel relief, and homecoming, but all he felt was dread.

He'd come up with some excuse for Mary about the damn ceremony video, and that would be that. Sherlock was probably already well into deleting the whole sordid mess, the lucky bastard.

*           *           *

_So what am I going to do about it?_ Was there any outcome that did not involve the end of their friendship? If it was going to end, regardless of whether he chose silence or speech, how did he want to be remembered?

In the midst of these thoughts, Sherlock was idly thumbing through the channels when he recognised some holiday dreck John had insisted they watch, years ago. Sherlock had conceded, if only because one of the characters, with the apparent if improbable profession of penis stand-in, looked eerily like a younger, more insecure version of John and was often onscreen in varying degrees of undress. John hadn't seen the resemblance. They had traded tea for brandied chocolate that night, and fallen asleep at some point in the treacly falling action, slumped on one another's shoulders until morning light and frozen extremities sent them shuffling to their respective beds.

Sherlock let the film play on without changing the channel, half watching, half reminiscing, giving in to the recollection of John's easy laughter and the weight of that drowsy head on his shoulder. He was fondly imagining it was John leapfrogging down the steps of a stoop, high on post-case adrenaline instead of post-date glee, when a thread of the plot stabbed through to his consciousness.

A wedding video that revealed too much. Banoffee pie. The best man besotted with the bride. Carollers. A useless confession. "To me, you are perfect."

_John called me a drama queen, did he not? Might as well live up to my billing._

It was mad, but it was something. He gathered the necessary supplies. No need for marquee-size poster board, a disused sketchbook would do as well. Simple statements, in bold marker. John would twig to the film reference or he wouldn't. This wasn't the launch of a charm offensive, just ending the chapter on his own terms.

Sherlock was still awake when the sunrise began, still scribbling and scratching out and scribbling again when he heard Mrs. Hudson begin her morning routine. By mid-morning he was exhausted but the orison was complete. He sent John a simple text and allowed his consciousness to collide with the sofa.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's not a romcom without overwrought declarations.

They were standing in the lab at Bart's. Sherlock's text would have been cryptic to the uninitiated but it was clear as a bell to John: _I am sorry. 7 pm. Afghanistan or Iraq. -SH_

The moment he saw the text, John had told Mary that Sherlock needed to consult with him that evening on a case, predicted the work might go late, and stared down the clock from the moment the clinic was shut for the evening until he could begin the walk to the lab.

When he arrived, Sherlock was standing by the worktop, nervously fingering a large spiral-bound sketchbook. He was more composed than he had been in the doorway of 221B, but there was tell-tale anxiety clouding his normally piercing gaze, and something of the supplicant in the way he silenced John with a small hand gesture of  _wait, please, allow me_ .

Sherlock opened the notebook, resting the long side on the worktop and looking intently at his audience of one. Slowly, steadily, at an even waltz-pace, he flipped the pages and revealed their messages.

**John,**  
 **I am sorry.**  
 **I couldn't tell you then what I didn't know.  
** **Feelings. Not my area.**

**I am sorry.**  
 **I jumped not knowing**  
 **how it would affect you  
** **or how being away from you would affect me.**

**I thought I had no choice.  
** **I am sorry, for both of us.**

**I came back, and I knew things.**  
 **Finally knew myself,  
** **thought we could begin again.**

**Foolish of me to think**  
 **you wouldn't have done that already.  
** **Clever John.**

**I am sorry.**  
 **You were loved.  
** **You are loved.**

**Never doubt that.**  
 **I am sorry, so sorry  
** **that I ever gave you cause.**

The moment the last page flipped, Sherlock squeezed his eyes closed and kept them that way. It had been a mad idea, so far beyond his wheelhouse as to suggest a mental break. He had only made the tension between them worse, he felt that now. And oh how stupid, to think a clumsy unspoken allusion to a decade-old movie would somehow transform a ham-fisted flail into a magic panacea. It wasn't enough for John to know he'd had moments of weakness at a sentimental event like a wedding, oh no, he had to prostrate himself like a penitent and shove the responsibility for his penance onto John's blameless shoulders.

It took less than a second to travel from hopeful vulnerability to morbid self-reproach, but it was an absorbing second. He didn't notice the added warmth or pressure on his clenched fists until small, certain fingers began to pry those fists open. By the time Sherlock considered risking vision once more, John had interlaced their fingers and brought their hands together and up in between their chests.

It was soothing.

It was impossible.

"Sherlock. I need you to look at me. You can look at the top of my head, or the tip of my nose, or anywhere you like, but please look at me."

_John was very smart. Did John know how smart he was?_ With the barest dip of his chin, Sherlock ventured an oblique glance down at their joined hands.

"That's okay, Sherlock. You're doing very well. Keep your eyes on our hands, that's fine."

_John was very kind. Did John know how kind he was?_

"What you did...God, well, first off I can't believe you didn't delete that entire movie, much less the soppy carollers scene. Amazing. But more importantly," and here John grazed his left thumb over the back of Sherlock's right hand, "I can't believe you said those things to me."

"Don't be modest or obtuse, John, of course I--"

With a squeeze of his fingers, John cut him off. "Sherlock, you incredible idiot, let me finish please. You were very brave, but now it's my turn."

_John was very silly. Did John know how silly he was? I am not brave, I'm desperate. Surely John knew the difference?_

"It took me...awhile. After you were gone. To realise. First to realise that I had been utterly mad about you and utterly clueless, and then to realise something had been going on with you as well, and it wasn't you not feeling the same things for me, or me not being good enough for you. To realise that it was always just us two, being idiots, stumbling towards each other but never seeing the wood for the trees. When you...when I saw you on that roof top, when I saw you fall, when I struggled through the crowd to feel your pulse and it wasn't there...it was like I'd fallen with you, that's how hard it hit me. Like the pavement reached up and slammed into my skull. I thought -- not then, I wasn't capable of thinking then, it didn't hit me until months after -- that all that time, before, I'd been bumbling along making all sorts of unconscious assumptions -- it occurred to me, maybe a year ago I realised, that maybe we'd been right there together, before, that we'd been mad idiots trudging the same bloody pages of the same bloody book, just out of, I don't know, sync or something.

"I know this isn't news to you, but...that fall, your blood, your awful non-pulse...it killed me. I didn't know if it meant more -- that you'd let yourself fall because you thought  _I_ thought you were just a machine -- or less -- that you'd taken that fall because there was nothing here, not even me, for you to live for. I never sorted that out, and trying to make sense of it drove me around the fucking bend. I still hate you for that, probably always will. Even if you didn't know, you  _should_ have known. Maybe not known exactly how I felt, but known that I'd be gutted by what you made me watch.

"But then you came back, and either it meant nothing -- and part of me, part of me wanted it to mean nothing, to mean that all the soppy realisations I'd built up after your death were just that, soppy and meaningless -- and part of me wanted to believe that it had hurt you, that you had felt real pain, being away from whatever, from whatever insane thing we'd had.

“But you made it easy to believe it was meaningless to you. How did you do that, Sherlock? Why did you do that? Was it Mary? Did you not know I'd fucking  _pined_ for you? Did you think that she was somehow not just a plaster on a wound, that she was somehow  _more_ than you? Did you really believe that?” John’s voice went very still. “I think maybe you did. I think that's how you did it, how you faked the past few months. It kills me all over again, knowing that you did that to yourself, and that I let you. I saw your face in those videos. I saw how you looked at me, and when I was watching that footage, what I felt most, what I felt most Sherlock, was that I was looking into a goddamn  _mirror_ . Because every time I let myself feel what I feel for you, it's like your face at that altar. It's longing, it's mad maybe, and it's pathetic maybe, and it's the most ridiculous goddamn feeling, but it's yours. It's for you. It's all for you."

_John was amazing. Did John know how amazing he was?_

"D'you know, I had the most awful, terrible, no good realisation last night? I was cycling home after you ran out, I was trying to make sense of everything I'd seen, and reconcile it with the past few months, and the past few years, and the thought occurred to me -- and by God I know it's hell-worthy, it's base, but it's true -- I imagined Mary on that roof, my wife and her barely there child -- I imagined her falling off that roof, and I felt what that would be like, watching her fall...and it was bad, it was terrible, but it wasn't...it didn't kill me like it killed me to watch you fall. It would be painful, I would mourn her, them, but it wouldn't turn me inside out the way it did when you...you beautiful idiot...stepped off that ledge. Stepped into my nightmares.

"What I wanted to tell you, last night before you ran off. I wanted to tell you that if I had read you right, both then in retrospect and now in those stupid video clips, I wanted you to know, Sherlock you have to know, that whatever hell we're in right now, we are in it together. I don't know what to do about this alternative universe I fell into since you died. I don’t know what to do about Mary. I don't know what to do about you. But I want you to know that whatever it is you feel, you are not alone. You will never ever be alone, Sherlock Holmes, not as long as I live."

As if in punctuation of his monologue, John drew in an overdue breath. His grip on Sherlock's hands had intensified in the course of his speech, and parts of their joined fingers were white with pressure.

Now John was the one staring intently at their hands. "I was going to let it go. Again. When you ran off last night and wouldn't come back. Was going to let us continue to be idiots but then you did this" -- John gestured toward the sketchbook -- "and oh my god I am so grateful, Sherlock. I know, at least, I think I know what it cost you, and I thank you I thank you I thank y---"

With this final prayer of thanksgiving, John had lifted his chin and beheld Sherlock's entirely altered face. His eyes were no longer shy or avoidant. They were fixed intently on John's lips, went wide while darting quickly upward at the word "grateful”, then shifted back down as John's mouth spilled out its thank-yous. Sherlock's lips followed his gaze, interrupting John's looping gratitude with his own sudden benediction. It was only Sherlock's cupid's bow notching in between John's still moving lips, but it was enough. It changed the entire chemistry of every molecule in the air.

_John was_ delicious _. Did John know how delicious he was?_


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Earning the rating....

John had never spoken so many words at one time with so few breaths, and it could have been a deficit of oxygen that caused his skull to vibrate, but at that moment there were more important considerations that respiration. He leaned in to Sherlock, gripping his lapels and pushing back with his whole mouth, all deliberate intent, pressing forward with an emphatic subliminal chant of _you are not alone you are not alone you are not alone._

He moved slightly without fully breaking the contact between their lips, whispering _sotto voce_ , "christ I missed you, so much", and through stuttered intakes of small halting breaths, John began to place reverent kisses along Sherlock's jaw, along the side of his neck, at the dip of his collarbone. He loosened his grip on the fine wool lapels and drew his hands up to cradle Sherlock's still-amazed face. John wanted to speak again, to say something, but as he looked back into the rapt intensity of Sherlock's gaze, his mind went blessedly blank, his body saturated with a warm feeling of belonging and the world being set to rights.

There was only one thing to say. "Can we go back to Baker Street?"

There was only one answer. "Of course, John. Right away."

They allowed their hands to part as they made their way from the lab to the hospital exit, but once in a cab their fingers intertwined again, thumbs moving with the euphemistic grace and worship of bodies in sex. Their thighs pressed together, and though their habit had always been to gaze out cab windows and swim around in their respective thoughts, this time neither man had eyes for any point of interest beyond the communion of their fingers. At 221B, Sherlock paid the driver and John unlocked the front door, and as if by prior agreement, the moment they crossed the threshold they wound around each other like a braid. Sherlock tossed the notebook toward the stairs and leaned lightly against the door while John's hands curved under the suit jacket and around his waist, and at the same time Sherlock’s own arms tightened around the certainty of John's back. Each adjusted and readjusted his grip on the other for a firmer hold, ever closer but not satisfied, making involuntary sounds of frustration as if the strength of their meaning to one another could be measured only by the pounds per square inch each exerted on the other's body. It took a particularly evocative whimper from Sherlock to bring John's brain online long enough to shuffle backwards, pulling Sherlock's waistband with him, and directing them towards the stair. They stumbled, they grasped. They all but fell into the sitting room of the flat, towards the sofa where John had not-cried and Sherlock had not-screamed, less than a day before.

"Want you. So much. Can't. Can't promise what's after. Want to, want to promise you everything, don't know, don't know how." John toddled the pair backwards until his shins caught the sofa's edge, and he pulled Sherlock down with him, trying to read his reaction to these dual confessions of desire and ignorance while still encouraging Sherlock’s forward, downward momentum on top of his prone body.  

Sherlock caught himself, his right hand braced against the sofa's back, the other bracketing John's torso. Their legs were as intertwined as their fingers had been in the cab, and they were both breathing heavily. Sherlock drew in a lungful of air and closed his eyes. He could feel the proof of John's desire through his trousers, knew John was amply aware of the answering hardness pressing against his denims. The familiar smells of the flat were laced with the too-long gone scent of John's failing antiperspirant, the neutral detergent fragrance that emanated from his warm clothing, the stale drafts of their heavy evening breath. The sitting room windows were slightly open, and Baker Street was providing its reliable supporting track of murmurs, heels, engines. With a small shove against the sofa back, Sherlock righted himself slightly, dislodging his extremities long enough to settle, half upright, his knees framing John's hips and his arms again free. He opened his eyes and looked down at John intently as he slowly removed his jacket, tossing it to the floor. John's eyes were wide and dark, his eyebrows pulled hairward, his hands reaching to grip and squeeze the vee’d thighs before him. The jacket gone, Sherlock's fingers continued, deftly unfastening his cuffs before releasing his shirttails and undoing the remaining buttons one by one. When he was done, his shirt hung softly open, but before he could twist to remove it, John was leaning upward, as much as his trapped lower half would allow, reaching his hands under the fine fabric to touch, to finally touch, the warm soft skin exposed there. In the end they managed the shirt together and abandoned it to the floor.

Pushing John back down to the leather, Sherlock's hands tugged upward at John’s shirt and light cardigan with insistent, unapologetic fingers. As they moved from button to button, his eyes never left John's face. "John. I am not a patient man, and yet I have waited years to touch you. I do not allow anything to become important to me that I cannot make absolutely my own, and yet I am in love with a man who has a wife waiting for him elsewhere. I will not give you up and I will not settle for scraps, so tomorrow may be a hateful day. But whatever the outcome of your later deliberations, tonight I am not going to be patient and I will make you absolutely my own. This is what we should have been to one another, years ago, and it's who we can be, finally, right now. We are John and Sherlock at Baker Street, and there is not another living soul that matters outside these walls. Now take off your goddamn clothes."

The intensity of Sherlock's words, his fingers tugging at John's waistband, his eyes holding onto John's with certainty and need, all combined to galvanise John into action. He pulled his feet back towards his arse while drawing his knees up, effectively pitching Sherlock forward and into a demanding kiss, an act of explicit, unequivocal accord. His hands glided possessively over Sherlock's exposed back and down into his trousers, kneading the surprisingly lush arse cheeks and eliciting a satisfying sound from Sherlock, somewhere between a groan and a plea. John broke the kiss to nuzzle his lips into Sherlock's ear while whispering, "You like that." Sherlock's only answer was a guttural subvocalisation. "Oh god you fucking _love_ that," John rasped, a mix of triumph and wonder in his voice as he continued to knead the smooth, muscled skin in his hands.  

"Nnnggh, John, clothes clothes kill the clothes before I murder them." John giggled at that, a high gleeful sound absolutely incongruous with the earthy images circling behind his eyes but absolutely on par with the manic zeal with which he grasped at trouser fastenings, zips, and elastic. Hours later he would eye the bruises and abrasions on his hands and vaguely recall the recoil of his belt buckle as he unlashed it and the teeth of Sherlock's zip as his fingers scraped their way down, but for now this was a world without pain.

*           *           * 

At last they were bare and unhindered by foolish fabric. The wild storm that had raced through them moments before hit a centre of serene calm. Time slowed. They caught their breath. They focused their eyes on one another, answering the same questions with the same wordless understanding. They shifted until they were both lying on their sides and pressed together, hands roaming and mapping new territories, two patient, untiring cartographers.

They murmured confessions between kisses, each reveal punctuated with physical intimacies alike in kind and intensity to the emotional exposure. When Sherlock told him how he had self-deduced his feelings through constant dialogues with Mind Palace John, corporeal John pressed tender kisses along his forehead, eyes, cheeks, and chin, before using his tongue to bless and praise. When John told him about his stag night fantasies, Sherlock ravaged his lips until they both tasted iron.

Their hands weren't shy in their survey work, but as the kisses became more intense and whispers lapsed into growls, their explorations gained focus and their bodies shifted into an even more perfect alignment. In unison they broke off their kiss to tilt their foreheads down, together, to focus mesmerised attention on the almost unbearably intimate sight of their straining erections pressing each against the other. 

"Sherlock. Jesus. I have never seen anything this fucking gorgeous," John whispered, still staring down at the insane juxtaposition of his so-very-familiar cock against the utterly impossible vision of Sherlock's. He leaned back just far enough to lick a long stripe down his palm before insinuating his hand around their combined girth. He ran his thumb over his own glans, then Sherlock's, revelling in the moment Sherlock's wondering gaze turned into a paroxysm of sensation when their mingled pre-come smoothed the next stroke.

"Johhhhhnnnn. Me neith-- ah ah ohh god yes yesyesyesyes."

"Oh god I could watch this all day."

"I-- could-- let-- you-- oh christ John your hand. Don’t you dare stop."

And so, for what could have been a minute or a year, John didn’t.

Hours later John would look back on the moments that followed and inwardly marvel at how organically it happened, how much his mouth on Sherlock's cock had felt like the satisfaction of John’s own physical need. The ache in Sherlock's voice, the velveteen skin tightening over heated flesh, the arching back and unbelievable abandon of this body to his touch, they all told him what he seemed already to know, that he would do anything, anything, to give this body, this man, more reasons to growl, to whimper, to moan, to _react_ , to _feel_. It wasn't conscious thought that brought John to his knees, or brought his lips to tentatively explore Sherlock's tightening balls, then dragged those lips upward to tongue at his still-leaking head. It was something else, something entirely more forceful, entirely undeniable. His mouth was magnetized, and the only thing he could not imagine was pulling away. So he didn't.

Minutes and eons passed, John’s animated mouth humming encouragement and Sherlock losing himself in an answering rhythm. It was a testament to the implicit trust they had recovered, almost automatically from that first touch at Bart’s, that neither of them felt or demonstrated any of the first-time paranoia of new lovers. Sherlock’s hips thrust upward into John’s mouth because that is what they were built to do, and his hand pressed firmly down into John’s short hair because its insistence was the language it was meant to speak. With another pair in another lifetime there could have been caution, anxiety, _Am I taking too much? Is this what he wants?_ \-- the tentativeness of two strangers warily anticipating one another’s boundaries and comparing them to some lowest common denominator sexual etiquette. This wasn’t that. This was a lock and key rightness that had been waiting for them to discover whole.

Not that there weren’t moments of awkwardness. It had been a very long time since either man had been in his current position, and there were unanticipated biological inevitabilities that asserted themselves somewhere between the one man unabashedly fucking the other’s mouth and that same mouth zealously abandoning itself to be fucked. In short, John’s jaw became sore, and his hand took over as auxiliary just as Sherlock was on the verge. Sherlock’s orgasm overtook him just as John’s recuperated mouth was opening for another go. 

“Johnjohnjohnjohnjohn oh shit I’m sorry nnnnggghhh.” It wasn’t picture perfect, but with more hums of satisfaction and an insouciant swipe of his mouth and chin, John made it clear that it was absolutely nothing for which Sherlock needed to apologise. With his left hand, John reached up and touched Sherlock’s face to get his attention, and with his right, he gently guided all of Sherlock’s softening cock back into his wet mouth for a final caress of tongue and lips, radiating reassurance and pleasure as his eyes stayed fixed on Sherlock’s sated face.

Sherlock managed a soft, “c’mere”, and John crawled back onto the sofa into languid arms. Sherlock squeezed with the little remaining strength left to him, and said softly, a bit breathlessly, “I didn’t…uh. I didn’t know you....”

“…were into that sort of thing?”

“Yeah, that.”

“It’s been a long time. I never hated it or anything. But it was never natural like that.”

“Hmm. No, nor for me.” 

“Then again, I’ve been imagining it for a very long time.”

“You’ve been imagin-- ohh god. You’re…unbelievable.”

“Mmm hmm, likewise. This is…surreal. Amazing.” John snaked his right arm around Sherlock’s torso and up his spine, feeling the expansion and contraction of Sherlock’s lungs through the warm flesh between his vertebrae and shoulder blades. “You’re gorgeous, you are.”

Sherlock’s chest tightened at the praise, but his attention was quickly displaced downward. “John, you’re…you’re still hard.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the long delay. The 7th chapter did not want to be written, so I've split it up. This is the shorter piece and reflects some of John's doubts (which evaporate fairly quickly in the next chapter). The next chapter puts everything back on track and should be the last. Thank you for reading.

_“_ _You_ _’_ _re gorgeous, you are._ _”_  
 _Sherlock'_ _s chest tightened at the praise, but his attention was quickly displaced downward.  
_ _“_ _John, you'_ _re_ _…_ _you'_ _re still hard._ _”_

 

“Well spotted, Sherlock Holmes. You rather have that effect.” 

“May I…” The burst of self-assurance that had stirred Sherlock to attack their clothing and stake his claim via word and touch had lapsed into a slight tentativeness in the wake of John’s sexual leadership, and he asked the question more as a stalling tactic that a solicitation of consent. John, being John, nonetheless took it at face value. 

“Sherlock, if I say that you may do absolutely anything you like to me, I hope you understand that I draw the line at vivisection and caustic chemicals.” It was an attempt at humour, but somewhat lost on Sherlock, whose recently enervated body was already recharging alongside his racing mind, placing him several mental steps beyond their spoken exchange.

Sherlock shifted onto his knees, sitting on his feet with John’s shins to either side of his own thighs. As he considered the tableau before him, his long fingers massaged John’s lower legs idly but with welcome pressure. “That could have gone without saying but duly noted nonetheless”, Sherlock murmured absently, his eyes still scanning John’s prone body. His teeth tugged at his bottom lip, a gesture of concentration while he mentally prioritised which of his uncountable Naked John fantasies should take precedence now that the barely-hoped-for had become flesh and blood and gagging for it on his sofa. _No not gagging for it, scratch that._ _This is John Watson, not a wanton thing out of control. This is John Watson, ardent, aroused, avid_ _…_ _wait why am I thinking in alphabetical alliteration?_  

John saw the mental wheels turning as Sherlock surveyed the territory of his skin. It was always hypnotic to watch the man sort through evidence and observations and reach impossible conclusions, but this was a whole new level of spellbinding, to be the focus of Sherlock’s study, to know that the purpose of his regard was not to deduce a crime but to maximise the pleasure they would gain from whatever happened next. To realise that in one way or another, Sherlock Holmes – Sherlock Holmes! – was about to get him off, and was at that moment devising the most mind-melting manner of doing so. 

John saw the moment the choice was made. There was a shift in Sherlock’s entire aspect, from cogitating potential energy to pure kinetics. His palms travelled purposefully up John’s thighs as he leaned downward, and he brought his lips within a hair’s breadth of John’s ear while his hand fisted loosely around John’s still-eager cock. “John,” he whispered, “come with me.”

The buzz of Sherlock’s baritone would have caused a frisson of pleasure had he been quoting Churchill or Virgil, but the shiver that went through John’s frame was down to a completely different cause. _“_ _Come with me_ _”_ _? What, now, on command? Or does he mean_ _…_ _wait, where is he going? The bedroom? Does he mean for us to_ _…_ _?_

Sherlock had paused a moment to allow his ambiguous demand to sink in (and unknown to him, tip John into confusion), then peeled himself off the sofa with characteristic grace. John watched him walk toward the corridor, feeling his full body honest-to-god _quiver_ at the sight of Sherlock’s naked backside in spite of his suddenly mixed feelings. He closed his eyes and collected himself. For the first time since he walked in to the lab at Bart’s, John felt exposed, and not entirely comfortable, and apprehensive about what Sherlock had in mind. He wasn’t doubtful about his desires – even amidst his morose pining there had been narrow windows of fancy in which he’d pictured every possible permutation of his and Sherlock’s bodies in sex, and now that those silent films were mingled with certain knowledge of touch, taste, and smell, he wanted all of it, any of it, every technicolor opportunity. But there was still one tremendous hurdle. Mary. He was being unfaithful to her, and though he had made peace with that for this one night because he knew it was a prelude to the end of their marriage, he did not want the first time he felt himself inside Sherlock to happen while his wife was across London with tea and telly in newlywed obliviousness. Maybe there was no sliding scale of infidelity, but some things should only be shared by people who are absolutely free. 

Sherlock’s voice broke through these less-than-peaceful thoughts with an impatient, “Coming, John?” 

John opened his eyes. Sherlock had returned to the kitchen and was standing expectantly in the doorway. A hint of concern had crept into his face, and despite his reservations, John instinctively felt the need to erase it. He forced suspicion to heel to inquisitiveness and asked, while sitting up, “Where are we going, then?” At the same time, he noticed the faint sound of running water at the far end of the flat.

Sherlock was already turning back toward the corridor as his answer trailed behind him. “To give you a wash.”

Confused but curious, John followed. 

*           *           *


	8. Chapter 8

By the time, a moment later, that John approached the bathroom, Sherlock was already inside. “I don’t know if I should be insulted, but honestly Sherlock I’m hardly in the mood for a hygiene brea—"

The protest, along with his entire capacity for conscious thought, was immediately derailed by the view that awaited him as he crossed the threshold into the bath. Sherlock, already standing under the shower head, allowing the warm water to stream through his dark curls, along his shoulders and arms, in rivulets along his deltoids and down his lower back, in captivating fingers of water along his hips and down the cleft of his arse….Taking it all in, John felt an ache in his chest and an echoing pulse in his cock. Whatever reluctance his mind and body had experienced minutes before was left behind in the corridor as he walked in, closed the door, and eliminated the space between his and Sherlock’s skin as quickly as the tub ledge would allow.

He whispered, “hello there gorgeous” while giving Sherlock a full body squeeze and pressing kisses into Sherlock’s wet nape, then moving his hands to Sherlock’s hips and inviting the man to turn around. Sherlock’s eyes were bright in the steaming bath as he leaned down to press his lips into John’s for a welcoming kiss. The warm moisture from the shower had softened Sherlock’s already indecently friction-plumped lips, and the meeting of their mouths had a new dimension of intimacy, of decadence, beyond anything they’d yet experienced on dry land.

The sub-guttural sounds of pleasure that emanated from each of them could have been down to the richness of the kiss, or the mutual and enthusiastic arse groping they were enjoying with unfettered abandon, or some incalculable combination, but whatever it was, it was, as John succinctly put it while murmuring through their snogging, “so fucking good, Sherlock, god this is good.”

Sherlock took advantage of the momentary pause to exhale a note of agreement while reaching down for one of his “posh suds,” as John used to call them. “I promised you a wash, Dr. Watson. Under the water with you, sluice up.” John complied, quickly soaking his hair through and allowing the water to rinse over him entire. Sherlock gazed approvingly at John’s form as he eased a handful of body wash into the cup of his left hand. He set the bottle down with his right, then angled the shower spray away from John’s head, asking him to turn around then nudging him forward and encouraging him to brace himself on the tile wall as needed. And then he began.

In theory this was Sherlock soaping John up, but in reality, or as much of reality as mattered to Sherlock at this moment, this was a very good excuse for minute study and worship. John didn’t know what to expect, but with his back to Sherlock and Sherlock’s hands on his skin, he made the executive decision to stop fucking thinking about it and just feel his way through. So he did.

Had his brain still been online, John might have expected Sherlock to start at the top and work his way down, but that’s not what happened. Having distributed the soap evenly between both hands, Sherlock knelt down behind John and used long strokes to lather up swaths of skin between his arse and his toes. Every square inch was eventually graced with his circling fingertips and thumbs, caressing motions that blended massage with grace notes of exploration and veneration. If Sherlock’s mouth could reach, then the skin was licked and kissed before being laved with soap, and for bits below the reach of his lips, his fingers gave extra attention. John was holding admirably still, while his throat hummed a reverberating litany of acknowledgment and appreciation and enjoyment. Occasionally those noises of pleasure would coalesce into words –“so good”, “ah oh yes”, “god that’s nice”– and Sherlock catalogued each reaction. He had made his way past John’s shins, calves, and knees ( _back of knees, erogenous zone, warrants further study_ ) to his upper thighs, assiduously avoiding buttocks, bollocks, and cock, then stood and took the shower nozzle from its holster to rinse the soap off of John’s lower body.

He returned the shower head to its home and soaped his hands up again, this time starting with the slight slope from nape to trapezius and the strong expanse from deltoids to biceps. Now that he was standing firmly and could breathe more deeply, Sherlock took in the body before him with eyes as much as hands and mouth, starting with the expanse of John’s back, so unlike his own – compact where his was lithe, tan from his recent holiday where his was ever-pale, and relatively unscarred (but for the messy mass of divots left behind by the exit wound and follow-on infection) where his had seen lash and cigarette butt and worse.  _All for this man, to enable this moment, and god it was worth it._ A surge of love-fueled adrenaline made him glide his lathered hands down John’s biceps and along his arms to meet John’s braced fingers on the tile wall. He joined their hands while blanketing his body against John’s back, notching his nose at John’s temple before tilting down to kiss the skin just above the shell of his ear. John turned his head slightly into the touch, pushing his bum backward to better fit the curve of Sherlock’s body behind him. It wasn’t an invitation per se, just the perfecting of their physical moment.

In response, Sherlock tugged their hands away from the wall and folded their arms together around John’s torso. He nipped at John’s earlobe gently, then said, quietly, “So many times you have saved me, John. So many times, even immediately after we met, I caught myself feeling safe, but it was strange, so strange…to feel safe but not because I was the cleverest, or the fastest, or the one who cared the least, but because someone else was keeping me so. I suppose I must have felt safe when I was a boy, at some point, but it didn’t last. I don’t know when I learned I had to do all that self-protecting on my own, or why I resist so much the genuine efforts of others, but I do know that it was never a decision with you. You just fit, just like this.”

The shower head was still impotently warming the tiles above and beside them, so there was no way to mistake the hot drops that fell on their forearms for anything other than the bittersweet ( _so good, but so much time lost_ ) tears of two men very much in love. John tightened his grip on Sherlock for a brief second before releasing him and attempting to turn around. “You are unbelievable. I love you so damn much. We better get out of here though, yeah, before we turn into prunes.”

“Oh no Dr. Watson,” Sherlock said with a mischievous lilt, while firmly refusing to allow John to turn away from the wall, “I’m not done with you yet. Resume the position, Captain.”

Laughing (a little nervously, truth be told), John complied, head still swimming with this new vision of Sherlock the Romantic. As before, he let go of trying to think ahead of the moment, and retuned his senses to Sherlock’s ministrations.

Before proceeding, Sherlock once again rinsed off the lingering suds, then squeezed another round of soap into his hands before returning to the lower planes of John’s latissimus dorsi and curving around to scrub pectorals and abdominals. He lavished especial care on John’s peaking nipples, savouring the choked gasps his fingers’ play elicited, before moving his hands down to massage John’s belly. John instinctively sucked in – partly from a tickle reflex, partly from vanity – before relaxing again as Sherlock chuckled more kisses along his scapula.

“Yes, perfect, relax John. So so perfect.” Sherlock’s thumbs were working every small muscle group from lats to sacrum, and John was melting. Both men gave silent thanks to the ancient boiler that had given out three years back, forcing Mrs. Hudson (read: John) to replace it with a tankless model. Its promise of endless hot water had never been tested so brilliantly. Sherlock made a mental note to contribute some appropriate amount to a clean water charity as fair penance for overuse of resources. He felt confident Mother Nature, had she existed, would sanction their indulgence.

John’s legs were weakening with sensory input, and he moved up to rest his forehead on folded arms against the tile wall. Sherlock hesitated for a moment, unsure if he had over-taxed John’s endurance. He hadn’t.

“No please Sherlock, don’t stop. Just need a little extra support. Unless you’re tired…I know I’m being selfish but god this is—“

“It’s amazing, John. I don’t want to stop, not at all. As long as you’re okay, I’m brilliant.”

“Hmm, brilliant yes. Please proceed.” John grinned into his elbow.

Sherlock sighed in relief. But for the fact that every square inch of John was perfect, he had in other ways only just now gotten to The Good Part.

One more rinse, one more application of posh suds to now-wrinkled fingers. Only the slightest amount of soap this time, just enough to give a little slickness to Sherlock’s deft attentions to his next marks. 

When Sherlock once again went to his knees, John sucked in a breath deep enough to hollow out his stomach. His exhale was a mix of pleading, gratitude, and anticipation. It would have been a whine, but of course, that was impossible.

Sherlock rested his palms against John’s hips, moving his thumbs in deep loops over John’s buttocks while kissing and nibbling at every available surface. His primary goal was the same as it had been:  giving pleasure, but he knew John, and cleanliness was non-negotiable for what he intended next. He stood up briefly for leverage, easing the fingers of his still-soapy left hand into the cleft of John’s arse while reaching around with his right to wash with firm but tender strokes John’s now very-engaged cock and tightening bollocks. He glided over perineum and bumhole, dipping his forefinger in briefly for thoroughness, focused on hygiene but far from clinical, and knew John was on the same page when his lover spread his legs wider, as wide as the tub would permit.

After using his left hand to rinse John’s backside (but leaving the suds on John’s groin to ease his way with John’s cock), Sherlock once again knelt down. “John, do you trust me?” He had to ask, though there was only one answer he expected, and it was the answer he received.

“Sherlock Holmes, I love you, I trust you, and I need you. Please.”

No invitation could have been plainer. With both hands, Sherlock parted the muscled flesh of John’s buttocks while kissing a trail from his sacrum down, down past his coccyx to the hot flesh between his cheeks. He breathed hard into the space he’d made, following his exhale with kisses along the inside edges of those perfect glutes, before homing in on the puckered skin of John’s waiting hole. He could hear John’s breaths coming in shallow staccatos, and he purred noises of love, of reassurance, of pleasure to calm the man quivering above him. Finally, as if it had a been a lifetime of waiting (which it had been) instead of a half hour (which it also had been), Sherlock reached his tongue down and under the meeting of gluteus minimus and perineum, and upward to lave a determined stroke introducing his mouth to John’s anus. It was like kissing had been,  _sans_ the answering strokes of tongue on tongue, but with the same sense of worshipful giving. He used lips and tongue to nip and bless with small movements and consume and plunge with large gestures. He brought every element in his repertoire to bear, and it was no less natural than John’s adoration of his cock had been, some immeasurable unit of time before. John’s body was responding beautifully, thrusting backward in slight lunges, sometimes swirling his hips in answer to Sherlock’s ministrations, until they had established a heady rhythm, Sherlock’s tongue breaching John’s hole over and over again, while his right hand fisted John’s cock.

“Sher—lock—I’m almost—oh god—more more more— nnnnggghhhhHHHH!”

John came so hard his knees literally gave way. Some of his semen had escaped Sherlock’s hands to consecrate the tile wall, and when his eyes opened again, he was leaning back into Sherlock’s arms, both of them sitting back in the empty tub, watching the water rain down above them and a small line of come cling gamely to the tile above the hot cold knobs. John was shaking. Sherlock was shaking. They both spoke at once, the same words:

“Incredible, amazing,” then laughed shakily at the mind meld.

“Can you sit up? I’ll rinse us off then get us dry.”

There wasn’t much to clean up, and it was the work of a minute to ease a fully washed John (still shaky, and blissed out beyond reckoning) onto the tub’s edge while Sherlock dried him off with the same reverence he’d applied to John’s shower-wet form. In the midst of these post-ablution sacraments, John had managed to regain his ability to speak and stand.

When they were both dry, he took Sherlock’s hand, still warm from the shower, and led him back to the sitting room. The slight breeze that was cooling off the summer night had infiltrated the room and was raising gooseflesh on Sherlock’s bare skin. John pulled the blanket from the spare chair, and guided them back to the sofa and into a close cuddle, Sherlock’s unresisting body shuffled against John’s, his head tucked into the space between John’s neck and shoulder. With his free left arm, John cocooned the blanket around them. He exhaled a deep breath, as content in body and mind as he could ever remember.

"I still can't believe you remembered that movie. God I remember being on this sofa while we were watching, and wanting so much to touch you."

Sherlock grazed his lips against John's naked shoulder, humming a note of agreement.

"And you falling asleep after a drop of brandy, you lightweight...you were slouched against me...I still remember how unbelievably good you smelled. I think I tried to deduce all the ingredients in your ridiculous shampoo from that smell. I wanted to turn my face into your neck and breathe you in, reach up and run my fingers through this mop." He did it now, allowing his forefinger to brush a few wayward curls of Sherlock's damp hair away from his forehead, and Sherlock hummed again, imagining the endearing look on John's face when he was attempting a deduction.

"I don't know if I got any sleep that night, but I didn't want to move and risk dislodging you. God I don't know when I've had a worse kink in my neck than I had the next morning. Worth it though."  John was still smiling goofily but Sherlock's hazy humming contentment had firmed up into a look of confusion.

"What do you mean you couldn't sleep? You fell asleep on my shoulder. I heard your breathing and heart rate slow."

"Ah, you've found me out. Rare benefit of PTSD therapy: effective relaxation techniques. Plus, you're not the only one who knows what a sleeping flatmate is meant to sound like. I'm chuffed it fooled you; I thought you might have simply been too knackered to notice. That, and a bit gone from the brandy."

For a moment Sherlock hovered between respect for John's acting ability and disgruntlement at being duped, but both feelings faded to naught as he took in the broad smile of the extraordinary man before him. With a delicate finger, he tipped John's chin closer and murmured, "Oh John Watson. It was an awful movie, but it got one thing right.  _'To me, you are perfect'._ "

FIN

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like John, I didn’t love the idea of penetrative sex at 221B while Mary (still just a hapless newlywed pre-His Last Vow, as far as our gentlemen friends know) sits at home gestating (for all we know, she’s actually got 221B wired, but that’s for another story). Shower rimming is my kind of compromise. For the record, I wrote this while listening to Watter, Pallbearer, Liturgy, and Labradford. Whoever says that drone and metal can’t be romantic is…probably right, usually, but not today. As I said at the top, this has been my first finished fic, and I really appreciate everyone who read any of it. Gonna keep writing and hopefully improving. Next up: some Christmas fluff for Exchangelock, then a longer post-HLV fix-it featuring omniscient Mycroft and BAMF John. Beta volunteers welcome! Thanks so much.
> 
> p.s. Sherlock's views on _Love Actually_ are not the author's own.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Constructive criticism and commentary are very welcome!


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